Reveling In Ignorance

It is perhaps the supreme irony of our age; for the first time in history we have access to a world of information and data literally at our fingertips; it is an era when profound ignorance should be quickly receding into the status of historical artifact; yet we are led by a federal government that revels in and promotes profound ignorance. This is not the way the twenty-first century should be.

In today's Star, Carol Goar begins her article with some damning facts about the Harper regime's relentless campaign of disinformation:

For the past year, Canadians have laboured under the misapprehension that thousands of jobs go begging because no one in this country has the skills to fill them. It turned out the government was using faulty online data.

For two years, people struggled to figure out how Ottawa could close prisons while ordering judges to impose more jail sentences. The auditor general solved that riddle last week: it couldn’t. Canada’s prisons are dangerously overcrowded.

For eight years, the government has been cracking down on lawlessness, despite a steady drop in the crime rate. Former cabinet minister Stockwell Day insisted “unreported crime” was rising.

Through three federal elections, Stephen Harper has campaigned as the prime minister who brought fiscal discipline to the nation’s capital. In fact, federal spending ballooned on his watch. He burned his way through the $13-billion surplus left by the previous government, leaving no rainy-day fund when the 2008 recession hit.

One of the key reasons the cabal has gotten away with these lies and carefully crafted pieces of propaganda is the downsizing of Statistics Canada, an agency that was once the envy of the world:

Half of the agency’s workforce is gone. Hundreds of its programs have been dropped. The mandatory long-form census has given way to a voluntary household survey. It would cost tens of millions of dollars to reverse these changes...

Auditor general Michael Ferguson's annual report offers some sobering insights into the costs incurred from the Stats Can decimation:

His most troubling finding is that StatsCan’s job vacancy survey is vague and unreliable. “It is not possible to determine where in a province or territory job vacancies are located,”...

Regarding the cancellation of the mandatory long-form census, whose response rate dropped to 69 per cent from 94 per cent in 2006, Ferguson says,

In parts of the country, so few households filled out the questionnaire that StatsCan could not produce reliable data. So it withheld the results in those areas, leaving municipalities, school boards, urban planners, developers, businesses and social agencies in 25 per cent of Canada without up-to-date information.

The Harper regime has, by stealth, changed the function of Stats Can, thereby eliminating the tremendous value it offered a wide array of people:

It has curtailed its consultations with entrepreneurs, academics and non-government organizations. It has narrowed its focus. “We found the agency primarily consults with the federal, provincial and territorial governments”

I suppose none of this should come as a shock to any of us. The greatest enemy of a regime intent on ruling through lies, fear and propaganda is truth. The Harper cabal is well on its way to eliminating that pesky problem.

The Common Sense Revolution Redux ( A.K.A. Tiny Tim Roars)

H/t Theo Moudakis

If you have resided in Ontario for some years, and were of a certain age when Ontario's Common Sense Revolution was conducted by Mike 'The Knife' Harris, you will recall it was a time of great upheaval that, contrary to the mythologizing that the right-wing so much enjoys fabricating, left the bulk of Ontarians worse off.

It was a time of job cuts, dissension, the sowing of hatred against various groups that fell into Harris' crosshairs, monumental downloading of provincial responsibilities to municipalities for which property owners are still paying dearly in their tax bills, the selling off of Highway 407 to cover fiscal ineptitude and balance the books, etc. etc. And yet, Harris was wielding a mere hatchet in his reductionist zeal compared to the battle axe that his acolyte, young Tim Hudak, plans to use should he win the election.

With the magical thinking so favoured by the extreme right, Hudak says that to balance the budget he will slash 100,000 public sector jobs out of whose ashes, along with more corporate tax cuts, will emerge one million 'good-paying jobs.' Forget for a moment that both strategies has been amply discredited and look closer at the numbers.

In a piece in today's Star, Kaylie Tiessen and Kayle Hatt analyse what will be involved in these cuts:

Statistics Canada indicates there were 88,483 Ontario public servants in the general government category in 2012, the most recent year of data available.

This includes the core public service, agencies, boards and commissions (such as Metrolinx, the Ontario Municipal Board, the Niagara Falls Bridge authority and several hundred other organizations), provincial police and judicial employees.

Eliminating 100,000 jobs would amount to 15.3 per cent of Ontario’s provincial public servants — 1.5 per cent of the total jobs in Ontario.

And this means the broader public service, including those involved in public education and health care, and would likely range from teachers, educational assistants, community home-care providers, nurses, etc.

The writers also make a point that Hudak conveniently chooses to ignore: the multiplier effect:

The federal ministry of finance estimates the multiplier effect of government spending is approximately 1.5. That means every dollar the government spends generates an additional 50 cents in economic activity through increased consumer spending, business activity and other second order effects.

Using that multiplier, we estimate the impact of cutting 100,000 good jobs out of Ontario’s economy would result in the loss of an additional 50,000 private sector jobs — because those who used to be employed in the public sector would no longer have the money they need to participate in the local economy, go to movies, eat at local restaurants and shop in local stores.

Essentially, the boy who would be premier demands that we bow at the twin altars of austerity and corporate tax reduction. Hudak tells us that it will be good for all of us, although it is truly difficult to discern any beneficiaries in this mad gambit.

The more people who understand these facts, one hopes, the less support Hudak's demented vision will receive on June 12.

Barely A Parody

If you have ever watched the Stephen Harper propaganda channel, you will have a hard time distinguishing it from the following parody:



H/t Canadians Rallying To Unseat Stephen Harper

In Harperland, The Worst 'Crime' Imaginable

... apparently is hanging the flag upside down.* Crypto fascists have always been thus.



*Hanging the flag upside down is recognized as a symbol of distress.

Connecting The Dots

H/t Ruth Blair

Following Politics Too Closely Takes Its Toll

I imagine that many people who follow politics closely do so in the belief that it is one of the few arenas that offers the possibility of change on a wide scale. Enlightened public policy, backed by the appropriate fiscal measures, can help bring about greater social and economic equity, thereby contributing to a more balanced and compassionate world. Unfortunately, perhaps inevitably, that hope is almost always dashed. Consequently, many of us fall victim to a deep cynicism about human nature.

In the current Ontario election campaign, there is much about which to be cynical. Three parties, all deeply flawed, all vying for our vote. There is the prospect of voting for a government long past its best-before date, the Liberals, whose leader, Kathleen Wynne, has thus far been unable to lay to rest the ghost of Dalton McGuinty. Next, Tim Hudak, leading the Progressive Conservatives, seeks to resurrect the ghost of Mike Harris, accompanied by an egregious contempt for the electorate's intelligence, reflected in his facile use of a fictitious number, one million, for the number of jobs he will create by cutting 100,000 of them.

At one time, solace might have been found in the New Democratic Party. Sadly that time is no more.

Its leader, Andrea Horwath, now inhabits an unenviable category. Having abandoned traditional progressive principles, like a pinball caroming off various bumpers, she emerges as one wholly undone by a lust for power.

Having forced this election by rejecting a very progressive budget on the pretext that the Liberals cannot be trusted, she is floundering badly as she tries desperately to reinvent herself and her party as conscientious custodians of the public purse, promising, for example, to create a new Savings Ministry, cut $600 million per annum by eliminating waste, and lower small business taxes.

Few are fooled by her chameleon-like performance. Carol Goar's piece in today's Star, says it all: Ontario NDP sheds role as champion of the poor: Andrea Horwath campaigns for lean government, forsaking the poor, hungry and homeless.

Horwath, says Goar, is so preoccupied with winning middle-class votes, assuring the business community she would be a responsible economic manager and saving tax dollars that she has scarcely said a word about poverty, homelessness, hunger, low wages or stingy social programs.

She continues her indictment:

She triggered the election by rejecting the most progressive provincial budget in decades, one that would have raised the minimum wage, increased the Ontario Child Benefit, improved welfare rates, and provided more support to people with disabilities. She parted ways with the Ontario Federation of Labour and Unifor, the province’s largest private-sector union. And she left MPPs such Cheri DiNovo, a longtime advocate of the vulnerable and marginalized, without a social justice platform to stand on.

No vision. Not a scintilla of progressive policy. Only the perspective of an uninspired and uninspiring bookkeeper.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here, is what Dante said was inscribed on the entrance to hell. These days, it could equally apply to those who have thrown in their lot with the Ontario NDP.

Ronald McDonald's Secret Agenda

As Johnny Carson used to say, "Folks, I merely report these things".